Enter a solo Jacob Collier-like harmonized voice rolling a 7/4 funky rhythm, preparing the ground for the bassline, which counterpoints the metric with a 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 pattern full of irregularities and groove, much like in Chris Squire style. Following a cascading groovy solo by soprano sax, which does not feels any pressure of irregular accents. Then an orchestral break on which a string instrument draws a few notes. Which incidentally becomes a fancy electro pop (still in 7) that paves the road for the string instrument interacting with voice. As in a kaleidoscope, we see images that we already know and we already seen before, but recomposed in a new and continuously different way. We have already met everything, but we can not detach ourselves, because there is a red thread that keeps us there to listen from beginning until the end. These are the first minutes from Vier, third album by Californian proggers Perfect Beings, which starts a game of quotations about influences between more or less symphonic progressive, art rock, mainstream jazz inserts, pop and classical pop. At any moment, to paraphrase the book of a contemporary art critic, it seems we can tell ‘I could do it too’: then, listening more carefully, we understand that nobody had done it that way before.

Born in 2012 from prog and Aor influenced Moth Vellum -check The Progressive Aspect– they produced two omonymous albums, before signing with prog master label InsideOut for Vier. Through various line-up changes, the band’s core is made by German-born, but US living guitarist Johannes Luley, keyboardist Jesse Nason and singer Ryan Hurtgen. For this recording they are supported by Jason Lobell on bass, Brett McDonald on the winds and Ben Levin on drums, who left the band immediately after the sessions for Cynic‘s Sean Reinert (formerly as well in Death, Gordian Knot).

In first two albums they preferred standard song structure enriched with superlative arrangements, typical of the best new prog scene: recalling formal perfection by Big Big Train, spatial atmospheres by Dave Kerzner and Lonely Robot, balance between progressive and contemporary synth sounds by * Frost. But it is clear that the influences go to the former Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd. Vier mixes the ground: recorded in a year of work, it is made of a double LP four sides, each dedicated to a suite and divided into parts –Vier incidentally meaning ‘four’ in German and Dutch. No surprise that the format quotes Tales of Topographic Oceans. But if Yes‘s most discussed album expanded each of the pieces in a gigantic way, here the approach is the opposite: each suite is made of separate tracks. Each is characterized by an uninterrupted cascade of themes, melodies masked as pop and only seemingly easy, which are only given a few seconds before moving on to another sonic invention. There is rarely a moment of breath or musical pause, they always go in search of a new moods, without ever losing the red thread and the formal balance, without ever exceeding the excess of instrumental parts.

Initial first suite Guedra moves from the intro to a piano and voice section that, just in the moment when it is becoming mellow, takes a modulation through the minor melodic scale and becomes a martial and symphonic slow tempo in the Blue Lake of Understanding. Following piece Patience starts with a Beatles intro, turns into a classic progressive track with synths over the top, and then turns into the pleasant ending soundscape of Enter the Center in a 9/8 ostinato. As Johannes Luley indicates in an interview with Nosefull, each suite has the main signature of one of the band members on it: if Guedra was drafted by Ryan Hurtgen, the next comes from Luley‘s own writing.

The Golden Arc is a long orchestral suite, which alone is worth the ticket price of the whole album and demonstrates how the band is advance in arranging and composition ability. The piano brings a melody on the minor G7 until flute’s entrance after a minute and thirty: enter the first theme, a colorful melody in the style of Debussy over a bolero rhythm. Then the second theme brought by the synth around three minutes, more inclined to intervals and atonality. Mood remains quiet, while second theme is ending in a mysterious diminished scale. A gentle waltz, which takes up the three against two rhythm of bolero, accompanies voice entrance and then flows into the stormy ending of the second theme. Again the voice of Hurtgens mysteriously closes The Persimmon Tree. The following sub-track Turn the World Off starts from where the second theme ended, this time including the band in addition to the orchestra, and through an increasingly dark pogression arrives at an aggressive final. Mike Oldfield is a constant comparison every time symphonic prog is mentioned, and obviously here too. Hutgens‘s voice is now clean, melodic and ductile, this time recalling Jakko Jakszyk; comparison sounding as much as appropriate since Luley indicates the current lineup of King Crimson as a source of inspiration, like a real ‘modern orchestra’. The next part of the suite, America, moves back to the first theme and opens the curtain for a bloody and rich guitar solo, which reminds me much of Gary Moore and Neal Schon, until the whole-band coda in For a Pound of Flesh.

Jesse Nason puts his mark on Vibrational suite, rich of synths and Tangerine Dream, new age atmospheres. A comparison to be made with Vangelis early prog or Jon Anderson‘s Olias of Sunhillow. And the fourth suite Anunnaki mixes all the previous elements together, like the supergroovy dialogue between orchestra and keyboards in Pattern of Light or the delicate nickdrakey ballad in A Compromise.

The finding the quotations and what-recalls-what game with Perfect Beings is inevitable. But Vier is a leap forward: every melody modulates to a new melody, when you least expect it and when everything seems to become predictable. A work disguised as simple and immediate, which, rather than attracting the listener, seems almost to deceive him. As soon as music is expected to take us in one direction, then it takes the other. All this through an subterrean theme that perfectly binds Vier‘ssuperb quality.